


Chuck E. Cheese Carnage

by waitineedaname



Category: Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware - Fandom
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, Post-Canon, They/Them Pronouns for Benrey (Half-Life), frenreylatta if you squint, vandalism of a chuck-e-cheese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28660692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitineedaname/pseuds/waitineedaname
Summary: When Benrey was given rules, they liked to follow them, even when most would ignore it.Most of the time, this only affected Benrey, and Gordon didn’t mind it. If the doofus wanted to avoid pirating movies like it was the worst crime imaginable, Gordon wasn’t going to argue with them. But sometimes, they enforced rules in a way that ruined Gordon’s fun.Case in point: attempting to stop Gordon and Tommy from getting their frustrations out in Chuck E. Cheese.
Relationships: Benrey & Tommy Coolatta & Gordon Freeman
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	Chuck E. Cheese Carnage

**Author's Note:**

> this was written a couple weeks ago when I was taking dialogue prompts on tumblr! the prompt was Benrey saying “This wasn't supposed to end in murder, guys, we talked about this" and it rapidly spiraled out of control lmao and now I'm putting it here on ao3 for organizational purposes! enjoy <3

Gordon was more surprised than he should have been to discover Benrey was a stickler for rules.

Perhaps it should’ve been expected; they’d spent the entirety of the trek through Black Mesa harassing him endlessly about rules that Gordon was fairly certain were not meant to be enforced in a life or death situation. Gordon had thought maybe it was just Benrey taking their work a little too far or enforcing the rules  _ only  _ to inconvenience him. While some of that may have been true -- Benrey  _ really  _ seemed to get a thrill out of bothering him -- it turned out to be more so because when Benrey was given rules, they liked to follow them, even when most would ignore it. 

Most of the time, this only affected Benrey, and Gordon didn’t mind it. If the doofus wanted to avoid pirating movies like it was the worst crime imaginable, Gordon wasn’t going to argue with them. But sometimes, they enforced rules in a way that ruined Gordon’s fun. 

Case in point: attempting to stop Gordon and Tommy from getting their frustrations out in Chuck E. Cheese.

“This wasn't supposed to end in murder, guys, we talked about this,” Benrey complained from the main area of the restaurant (because it was a  _ restaurant _ , dammit, no matter what Tommy’s intimidating dad said). Tommy ignored them and continued lobbing skee balls at the animatronics at an alarming velocity. Gordon cheered him on from where he stood atop the air hockey table.

It had been Tommy who suggested an outing to Chuck E. Cheese, no surprise. Gordon was bored and had nothing better to do, so he said fuck it, sure, he’ll partake in the rat’s pizza for an afternoon. Before they entered the restaurant, he had grabbed Tommy and Benrey by the shoulders and told them (but mostly Benrey) that they weren’t going to cause trouble, please behave, he wanted to be able to take Joshua to this Chuck E. Cheese at some point and he didn’t want to get banned. Tommy hadn’t said anything, had only smiled in a way that probably would’ve conveyed “who, me?” had Gordon been paying attention and hadn’t been distracted by Benrey going “booo, Gordon banning us from fun, lame.” When they went inside to buy tokens, however, Gordon saw Benrey hanging back and reading the rules of play that had been posted near the arcade entrance. Well, if they weren’t going to listen to Gordon, at least they were going to listen to the sign. 

The restaurant was virtually empty, just them and the bored employees who seemed unfazed to see three grown adults in an arcade designed for five year olds. Gordon briefly wondered if he should’ve brought Joshua just for appearance’s sake, but the kid was with his ex for the week, and besides, the employees didn’t seem to care. They had about an hour of fun fucking around with the arcade games when Gordon finally pulled himself away from the fighting game he had been playing with Benrey. The two of them had been getting  _ way  _ too competitive, and he had learned by now that there was a certain point where he needed to take a step back or else it would end with one of them in a headlock and the other one yelling about cheating. At least, that’s how it always ended when they played Street Fighter at home, and he definitely didn’t want to risk being the one with his face in the sticky Chuck E. Cheese carpeting. So he waved Benrey off with a promise of a rematch later and wandered over to where Tommy was standing in front of the skee ball machine, a small frown on his face.

“Hey, you good, man?” Gordon asked, putting his hand on Tommy’s arm. Tommy didn’t look away from the skee ball machine, but his mouth twisted into a tighter frown, a look of annoyance on his face that he usually reserved for truly frustrating Resonance Cascade related bullshit. Or for when Gordon or Benrey put the orange juice cartons back in the fridge with only a tablespoon of juice left in them.

“This- I think this game is rigged,” Tommy said, tossing a ball in his hand absently. 

“What?” Gordon laughed a little. “Are you sure you’re not just losing?”

“No, I- I have perfect aim. This game should be a cakewalk.” Sometimes it was a little hard to tell when Tommy was joking, but Gordon was fairly certain he was dead serious about this. 

“I mean, I’m pretty sure all the games are kinda rigged. They make the buttons intentionally stiff or something to scam people out of money.” Gordon rubbed the back of his head and shrugged. Tommy turned to face him, looking betrayed. 

“But… that’s fraudulent! Isn’t- Aren’t there regulations against that?”

“Uh, I mean, maybe, but I don’t think they’re really enforced. Pretty much any arcade is gonna be like that.”

“They shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

“Nope.”

“But they do it anyway?”

“Yep.”

Tommy was silent for a minute, appearing deep in thought. He then turned on his heel, and before Gordon could react, he was throwing the skee ball at the nearest animatronic with the skill of a professional baseball pitcher. Gordon’s jaw dropped, and Tommy turned back to him with a broad smile on his face. “See, Mr. Freeman? Perfect aim!”

“Yeah, I- I see that!” Gordon laughed, startled. “Why’d you do that, bud?”

“If they’re not going to follow the rules, I’m not either!” Tommy seemed to sense Gordon’s apprehension and tossed him a skee ball. “Don’t worry, my dad knows really good lawyers.”

Gordon rolled the skee ball between his hands and glanced back at the main counter. One of the cashiers looked stunned at the display of violence, but the other one gave them a bored hand wave as if to say they weren’t paid nearly enough to stop them. “You know what? Fuck it. If we get banned, we get banned.”

Tommy flapped his hands excitedly and cheered Gordon on as he climbed on top of the air hockey table. “Do something- Do something crazy!”

Gordon’s aim wasn’t nearly as good as Tommy’s, but turns out that throwing anything with a destructive intent was a good way to release energy. Tommy continued chucking skee balls at the animatronics while Gordon started kicking the pucks off the air hockey table. They were making enough noise to distract Benrey into abandoning their fighting game to investigate what the hell they were doing. 

“Broooo, what are you doing?” Benrey complained, watching the two of them wreck havoc. “That’s- This is against the rules. Gonna get  _ banned _ , man, whadda hell.”

“Come on, Benrey, I know you wanna break shit.” Gordon sat down on the air hockey table, which creaked concerningly underneath him, and threw a striker at them. 

“Wh- No, dude!” Benrey let the striker hit them on the chest and didn’t seem to notice. “You’re killing him! You’re killing Chunky Cheese, oh my god.”

Tommy laughed, breathless. “Aren’t- Aren’t you tired of being nice? Don’t you want to go apeshit?”

Benrey sang out a panicked string of brown to white Sweet Voice. “I’m gonna hafta call security on you. Gonna send you to Chunky Cheese jail.”

“Chuck E. Cheese doesn’t have on-location security!” Tommy countered, climbing over the barrier that separated the main area from the animatronic band to better attack them.

“I’m on this location, bro.” Benrey said, even though they were clearly in sweatpants and hoodie they’d stolen from Tommy, not anything resembling their security uniform. 

“You don’t work for Chuck E. Cheese.” Gordon argued, still perched on the air hockey table and repeatedly kicking the nearest arcade machine.

“Huh? I’m gonna have to ask you to stop, sir, or else I’m gonna have to take you in under Cabinet Man violations.” Benrey started to approach Gordon in an attempt to stop him, knowing they had no chance of stopping Tommy from climbing on top of the animatronics.

“You’ll never take me alive!” Gordon cried out, overcome with the giddiness of childish destruction. He clambered to his feet atop the table and almost immediately heard the distinct sound of wood breaking. He only had an instant to make panicked eye contact with Benrey before he was plummeting to the ground. 

Tommy ended up driving him to urgent care, Benrey berating the two of them the whole time. They did get banned from every Chuck E. Cheese location in a thirty mile radius, but that’s fine. Josh liked Dave & Buster’s better anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Sweet Voice translation: chocolate to rice, aren't you tired of going apeshit, don't you just want to be nice?
> 
> I'm on tumblr @waitineedaname, come say hi!


End file.
